A Forgotten Goal

A Forgotten Goal
NCLB: A Brief History

The implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002 called for heighten standards in the educational system, ultimately to educate children of the United States to become competitive in the globalized world (Honawar, 2005). Under NCLB, each state “establishes an accountability system that has separate performance goals in reading and mathematics with all schools reaching 100 percent proficiency in each area within twelve years” (Swanson, 2003). In order to measure the progress of the students, each state administers a series of standardized tests from grades 3 through 8. The results of the tests infer if the school is adequately teaching students to the state’s defined proficiency standards. If a school does not meet the proficiency standards for two consecutive years, the school moves to “program improvement status”. With this label, the school must develop improvement plans. If the school remains in the improvement status, for three or more years, “school systems are required to take corrective action, ranging from replacing staff, implementing a new scientifically based curriculum, or potentially closing the school and reopening it as a charter school” (Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2008 p. 2).

NCLB: The Current Trends

Six years after NCLB was established, students in grades 3 through 8 are still continuing to be administered the state’s standardized tests. The once utopian goal of schooling and nurturing creative, flexible thinkers to be the leaders in a globalized world may be a distant realization. The emphasis on the importance of the test adds stress on the teachers, schools, and students. Ultimately teachers are becoming less interactive partners in the educational process and more machine like, teaching their students only what they need for the tests, all the while neglecting how to nurture creative thinking (Fisher, Hirsh-Pasek, & Golinkoff, 2008 p.7).

The realization that one of the goals of the test may be out of reach, or possibly just forgotten, is apparent in current testing materials. In the recent parent, student, and teacher information guide of the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK, 2008), the pamphlet emphasizes the importance of the test to the parents as such. “We believe the experience gained from taking this test will help your children when they take the state’s tests at another grade levels, including the eighth-grade test and the state’s high school graduation test” (NJ ASK, 2008 p. 4). The rational for the administration and completion of the test is simply because they will have to take subsequent tests. The pamphlet goes on to explain what the test composes of. Most of the test is composed of multiple-choice questions that the children must answer. The purpose for using multiple-choice questions are because “these questions are objective and do not require scoring by trained professionals” (NJ ASK, 2008 p. 5). Perhaps the test make up should not be based on the easiest way to score it, but instead be based on the most effective way to determine if students are progressively becoming citizens that will be competitive in the global market through creative and profound ways of thinking.

What does this mean?

Based on the pamphlet given to parents, teachers, and students, the reasoning for being given the tests are substantially different then those emphasized by the Bush administration. These mixed signals possibly show that the once idealistic thought may be out of reach, in part because of NCLB. The added pressure the teachers and schools face, are forcing them to strictly teach to the test. All the while educators disregard one of the reasons for the implementation of NCLB. Is it possible to produce competitive citizens in the global market as NCLB has stated, while completely forging away from this emphasis as shown in the current testing material given to educators and parents? If the true understanding of a goal is forgotten, is that goal unattainable?


Seth McCann

Is Single-Sex Schooling the Answer?

In last week’s Sunday paper, The New York Times Magazine featured a very interesting article titled, “Should Boys and Girls Be Taught Separately?” The article examined the positive and negative aspects of single-sex education in schools. By separating genders in schools, many parents and school faculty feel that standardized test scores will increase for the lowest-achieving cohort of school-aged children, minority boys. I was intrigued by this topic because recently in class, I feel like we always come to the same conclusion about NCLB. That is, it is close to impossible to try to standardize the way teachers teach and how students learn. Despite six years of No Child Left Behind, the achievement gaps between rich and poor students and white and black students have not significantly narrowed. Every child learns material using different strategies, and to try and standardize one assessment to test an entire nation of children would be ineffective in seeing how children are achieving. So, maybe teachers need to customize their teaching styles and curriculum to conform to the student, instead of having the student conform to the teaching style. Maybe single-sex schooling is the answer, because by separating genders in schools, teachers can teach to a specific group of individuals. If teachers know how boys and girls learn differently, then they can incorporate specific methods in the classroom that work well for a group of boys or girls. Here is what I learned from this article.

It has been well established that boys are currently behind girls in high-school and college graduation rates. In order to explain this, some principals, faculty, and parents seem to think that schools are being shaped by females to match the abilities of girls. Because of the allegations that certain schools discriminated against males, the Department of Education (as part of No Child Left Behind), passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools. The number of single-sex schools has skyrocketed. In 1995, there were two single-sex public schools operating in this country and by this past fall, the number is more than 360, with boys-and girls-only classrooms now established in Cleveland, Detroit, Albany, Gary, Ind., Philadelphia, and Dallas.

There are two separate camps who favor single-sex education; those who favor the separation because the two genders are biologically different, and those who believe boys and girls should be separated because they have different social experiences and social needs. The man who supports the biological standpoint is Dr. Leonard Sax. Leonard Sax, a family physician, has his own medical practice, yet he is devoting his time to promote single-sex public education. Keep in mind that Dr. Sax is not a teacher. He lectures at schools, explaining boys’ and girls’ innate differences and how to teach to them. He wrote a book entitled, “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” The book features case studies in which boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings are now pulling their grades up in single-sex schools. Sax also has a lot of neurological data on boys and girls to back him up. He mentions that, “boys don’t hear as well as girls, which means that an instructor needs to speak louder in order for the boys in the room to hear her; and that the boys’ visual systems are better at seeing action, while girls are better at seeing the nuance of color and texture.” Also, Sax notes that boys solve maze puzzles using the hippocampus; girls use the cerebral cortex. Boys covet risk; girls shy away. Boys perform better under moderate stress; girls perform worse. For all these reasons, boys and girls should be taught in separate environments in order to do their best work.

Although Dr. Sax’s research is convincing, some feel that his remarks are sexist, and that his studies do not gel with other neurological/ physiological studies on sexes. For example, when comparing motor development in boys and girls, the ability to balance, to hop, to use your feet, to use your fingers and hands, 5-year-old girls (as a group) look almost completely the same as 6-year-old boys. The same story is true for speed of output in the case of how quickly a child answers a question. “The gender gap in motor development shrinks through grammar and middle schools,” says Martha Denckla, director of the Developmental Cognitive Neurology Clinic at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Maryland.

Perhaps boys and girls will succeed better in different environments because they differ neurologically and because they have different social needs. David Chadwell, the coordinator of Single-Gender Initiatives at the South Carolina Department of Education says, “For boys, you need to get them up and moving. That’s based on the nervous system, that’s based on eyes, that’s based upon volume and the use of volume with the boys. You need to engage boys’ energy, use it, rather than trying to say, No, no, no. So instead of having boys raise their hands, you’re going to have boys literally stand up. You’re going to do physical representation of number lines. Relay races. Ball tosses during discussion.” For the girls, Chadwell says to focus on “the connections girls have (a) with the content, (b) with each other and (c) with the teacher.” Chadwell also says that girls should not be scolded for talking to one another, because they are more social beings, and teachers should incorporate a lot of meeting in circles, where every girl can share something from their own life that relates to the content in class.

Single-sex schooling is not a new idea. The idea has been around for a while, in private and parochial education, and has proved to be effective. Girls High of Philadelphia has an all female enrollment. Over 95% of Girl’s High graduates are accepted into 4-year colleges or universities. The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem (T.Y.W.L.S.), is another all-girls school for grades 7-12. Since opening in 1996, every girl in every senior class at T.Y.W.L.S. in Harlem has graduated and been accepted at a four-year college. Yeshivas are another example of single-sex schooling. They are Orthodox, all male Jewish institutions for Torah study.

So how effective is this type of schooling? Well, according to the article, students in single-sex schools do outperform coed students in standardized math, reading, science and civic test scores. However, the article goes on to explain why this may be. First, single-sex schools are better at providing kids with a positive sense of themselves as students. Second, in order to end up in a single-sex classroom, you need a parent who cares enough to make a choice between coed or single-sex education for their child. Therefore, these parents are taking active roles in their children’s educations.

After reading the article, I thought about the pros and cons of single-sex education, and here’s what I came up with. The bottom-line is that sending kids to gender specific schools will not help these children become tolerant citizens. They will not be exposed to working in group settings with all different types of people. In today’s world, good communication and being a team player are important skills to make it in the business world. If we separate children in schools, will they be able to develop these important characteristics? I doubt it. Separating children into different classrooms and exposing them to different teaching styles may improve test scores, but ultimately, children will be confined to their own cohort. Learning how to work with diverse groups, in a multicultural environment, with different intelligences is as important, if not more important, than a perfect score on the PSSA.

By: Marisa Rosenberg

Comparing America's Schools to Those in Other Countries

We constantly compare our schools to those in other countries in the subjects of math, science, and reading when the latter do so with us in regards to the incorporation of social skills into classrooms. This made me wonder: does the government want today’s American youth to think like or more than Chinese ones do, or study as hard as or harder than the youth do in India or Singapore? Do they aspire to have an education system that’s within the top five systems in the world? Are trying to be another Great Britain or Australia? It's really difficult to compare two national education systems because each one is based on its country’s cultural ideologies. China's and Japan's schools, a case in point, value groups and collectivity because their cultures do. Therefore, our schools can't measure up to them because we value individuality and constitutional rights.

Now, I'm not saying that there's no chance of improvement in our education system because there's always room for it (it's necessary that it happens!). I'm just saying that we should strive to be better for our families and country, not to be better than China, India, Japan, Britain, Australia, or any other world rival.

- Gabrielle C.

Teacher Feedback on NCLB

One student in our class interviewed her old high schools teachers. Here's what they had to say.

Public High School Science Teacher-
"Hi Lauren --
The biggest change for me is the increase of collecting data to back up TEST scores . It takes so much time that time is taken away from students---too much importance is being placed on test scores instead of education . Our school has gone crazy with scores and data about scores . I love the idea about NO ONE being LEFT BEHIND but the law is not set up the correct way to accomplish it . All to often laws are written by people who have never taught in a classroom or who were there so long ago that they have forgotten what it's like to have kids that need to learn , not just get test scores that make the school look good !
Hope to hear how you do on the project --- Best of luck !!
Love ya ---P.F."

Public High School Social Studies Teacher-
"Hi, Lauren.
I can't believe you are graduating. Let's not go there. It makes me feel old....
As for NCLB, here is my take:
1) It has not affected my teaching style. Like most trends in education, I see it as a passing fad that will fade come the inauguration of a new president. I have always tried to employ a variety of teaching methods to best reach all of my students. NCLB has not changed that.
2) It has affected schools because so much is expected of school districts -- yet the funding is not there. We have a "testing coordinator" in the school now! Is the federal government paying his salary? No; it's being paid by the taxpayers of Litchfield. I have also seen a reduction in course offerings because of the emphasis on "core" academic classes. Art, music, tech ed., and -- remarkably -- world language programs are being slashed. Kids suffer in so many ways when they don't get that "well-rounded" education.
3) It has affected students, mainly by inundating them with standardized tests, rubrics, and the like. The mandate also assumes that all children can learn and achieve at the same levels. That, simply, is not true. I will never understand calculus like Mrs. Jones does. Should I be expected to? The same principles should be applied to kids. Raising the bar is great, but at what cost?
4) I'm all for government programs that actually improve student learning (which I do not think NCLB does), but show me the money! NCLB has not been adequately funded from the start.
I hope that's helpful to you. Good luck as you complete your project.
Mrs. Crowe"

Public Elementary School Teacher-
"Hi Lauren,
I think that the NCLB legislation has had mostly a negative impact on public school education. Teacher morale has been negatively affected and students have become tired of the constant assessments that have been thrown at them. There is no doubt that motivation is a key element in education for both teachers and students and as motivation delines student achievement follows.
The primary goal of NCLB was to close the achievement gap that exists between the students from wealthy suburban school districts and students from financially handicapped inner city schools. If one examines the scores from standardized tests in Connecticut over the years that NCLB has been in effect it becomes clear that the achievement gap has been unaffected by the NCLB's policies.
If there is any benefit I would suggest that the scores from the standardized tests can be analyzed to determine where within a specific grade level and subject area efforts can be focused by staff to improve student learning. If the scores from standardized tests are representative of real student learning the numbers can offer insight to teachers and can guide future instruction. That is, if the scores can be trusted. There is really no reason to expect that a third or fourth grader would feel any motivation to put forth their best effort on a test that means nothing to them. At best, the test scores might be somewhat accurate be most likely they mean little or nothing.
I could go on about student drop out rate that is disguised by redefining "drop out", school systems that are punished because of the failure of one subgroup to reach adequate yearly progress as defined by NCLB and on and on.
Can it be fixed? I doubt it. Better to start new with real ideas about how to help teachers be better teachers and how to let kids rediscover the joy of learning as it was meant to be.
NS"

-Lauren

On "Indiviual Achievement" and the Evolutionary Capacity to Educate

We have a serious problem on this blog. Many times in numerous posts have I read the words "individuality" and "individual achievement" used to describe a goal toward which students should, ideally, strive (or be guided). Another issue that has been raised, is the question of whether we are capable, in an evolutionary context, of creating a system of education that doesn't require the herding of "pigeons," such that one's goal would inevitably be one of either dominating the pigeons in one's vicinity, or of being one of the few to break free of the educational stranglehold placed on the "pigeons" in the first place. I'll address our pigeonhood later.

The problem with individuality, and my feeling, can be stated as follows: how are we defining "individual achievement," and how does our definition fit into the greater cultural context? Ah, but this brings us to another problem! Once we've operationally defined "individual achievement," we won't be able to compare our educational system as easily to those of other countries (assuming that individuality is even considered to be an important aspect of the culture in question); we will no longer be able to bounce around the globe like a wanna-be chameleon on an educational pogo stick. We'll be confined to our own country and our own set of cultural values to work around; not those of other nations. Wow. What a thought.

So let's get that taken care of, just for the sake of making some headway here, and pursuing my argument further (because believe you me, I am headed somewhere with this): Individuality/Individual Achievement (assume that they are synonymous in that one cannot exist without the other) can be defined as the extent to which the individual develops and pursues his/her personal interests (including interests both academic and Darwinian) within and eventually without of an academic setting. If anyone has a problem with this, then I invite you to respond to the post and by all means, chew me out beyond recognition.

Given that definition, let's move on to this "pigeonhood" everyone's been raving about. I'll shoot straight for the jugular here, and take on the question of what's wrong with having "pigeons." So, what's wrong with a society that embraces a class of pigeons? We need them don't we? Sad though it may be, we truly do need our pigeons, it seems...

Someone raised this argument during the discussion today and I had too many problems with the logic behind it to start arguing the person in class. The question of whether pigeons (the poor, or the blue collar working class) are necessary, ties, very handily, directly back to our evolutionary capacity to educate. A previous blogger (somewhere above here, I'm assuming) posed the question of whether, given the necessity of having pigeons in a society, we were evolutionarily capable of properly and fairly educating our young. Well, to start, there is no necessity for a pigeon class. In fact, as a person who considers himself fairly well-read in evolutionary biology, I feel safe making the claim that we should avoid the formation of a "pigeon class" wherever possible. Stay with me here.

The very process of evolution, itself, on a cellular level, functions on the basis of altruism and self-sacrifice among cells; that is to say that each individual cell of any given organism does not operate solely on self-value and "individualism," so to speak. It's commonly understood, instead, that if a cell can make a sacrifice for the sake of another cell that will result in greater gain to the organism as a whole than it will a cost to the cell, itself, it will make the sacrifice. The same, of the evolutionary process, is true of the organisms themselves, including humans.

Take, as a brief example, the Fire Ant (the Fire Ant standing in place of the cell and the species as a whole standing to represent the organism of which the cells make part). This is a species of predatory ants that travel in massive, flowing hordes, devouring anything they happen to wash over while making their rounds among the forest floors. Now, say, for instance, they cross a snail. The first ants to attack the snail will become entrenched in, and begin to suffocate in, the snail's residual slime. Eventually, of course, this defense mechanism is moot and the poor little snail is overpowered and devoured, but there's still the problem of the few ants stuck and dying in the slime. Before vacating the site, the other ants will rush the slime, and selflessly rescue their trapped kin. Clearly this is at some cost to them, as it puts them at risk of getting stuck, and it gives them later pick of the snail meat being carried by the others, but they do it nonetheless. Why (I hear you ask)? Because saving these twenty-or-so ants allows for greater stability within the group, more protection on the way back, increases the odds of their being rescued should they be slimed next time, and gives a greater chance of the reproduction of the species. It also results in more mouths to feed, but if the ants worked solely on this principle (that of 'more food for me'), the species would die out within months, their numbers decreasing exponentially with each assault. A whole other plethora of such examples could be given regarding the Vampire Bat, the Wombat, the Chimpanzee, and the Human, among others.

This points an accusatory finger directly back at the pigeon issue, and why it costs us more than we gain, to have a "pigeon" class in the first place. Unlike the points implied earlier, our Darwinian origins, in fact, suggest a society without a large group of it's people relegated to an ultimately useless "pigeon" class, and thus a society with an educational system that does not promote "pigeonhood" among it's students; but rather one that condemns it in every respect as an abomination to the species (or in many cases, group/country/state) and to evolution, itself.

The No Child Left Behind Act is the farthest possible policy from the sort described above. It promotes a system in which the students are herded in one direction or another, pushed into one subject or the next, and "individual achievement" is virtually inhibited at every turn. The whole of society, of course, for the sake of evolution, I argue, should be organized according to sociability and cooperation. But where must one go if it is one's wish to restructure society? You start with the schools. NCLB is steadily dragging us in the opposite direction.

To further illustrate this point, and to finally end this blog post, I'd like to close with a quote:

"The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress... The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay."

– Peter Kropotkin

Are the Goals of NCLB Being Reached?

America’s reputation for being a land of opportunity and freedom is falling through the cracks. This is a crisis that most Americans are well-aware of, but I argue that NCLB is not being implemented in a way that will fix our problem. Schools are setting aside time separate from the curriculum dedicated to preparing for standardized tests, like the PISA. Learning how to take a standardized test does not foster abstract thinking skills. Instead, this time for practice is creating passive thinkers out of our future generations, and quite frankly, this is just a waste of American’s tax dollars.

In order for children of America to succeed in the years ahead, they need to become innovative leaders. Although the PISA claims to test 15 year olds internationally for these abstract thinking skills, I believe that less time should be devoted to comparing skills cross-culturally by tests and more time should be spent on programs that could actually have a chance at developing these skills in our American students. Perhaps the focus should be taken off the standardized tests and placed into training the educators. An enthusiastic teacher can instill passion and inspiration inside a student, and could change the student’s entire outlook towards education turning them into a more driven and dedicated individual. I know this through personal experience and by listening to other students talk about their experiences with great teachers. Finland is one country that has already experienced success in a program dedicated to training educators. Finland’s program also gives educators more of an incentive to teach by increasing their salary. This may not be the answers to all of our problems, but I believe a program like Finland’s will be much more beneficial than what the NCLB is doing for America today.

-Larisa

Honesty About the Issues

Today in class one of the most obvious things from our readings was that we as a nation are being lied to about education. Spelling's has/had nothing but good things to say about NCLB and the current state of affairs within the education system. Her trumpeting of handpicked statistics is eerily reminescent of 1984's Ministry of Truth. This seems to be a pattern within the current administration, repeat a talking point over and over until Fox News viewers think we've found WMDs in Iraq. But I digress, our education system is not performing on par with other modern countries despite the fact that 9 year olds may have performed better on an arbitrary, and most likely poor assessment tool, test. I think this election season needs to focus on the truth of the matter. America, like alcoholics, needs to admit there is a problem in order for said problem to begin to be fixed. Regardless as to what you may feel is the best way to fix the current crisis, one thing is for sure. We can't overcome what we don't admit exists.